by Silk, Avril
‘Your concern does you credit, Mrs Lake,’ smiled Titus. The smile was somewhat strained.
‘Doctor Lake,’ corrected Jo’s grandmother.
‘My apologies, Rosemary. I forget how you modern career women are giving us men a run for our money! Of course your work on infertility is well-known here.’
Jo noticed how smoothly Titus fended off the awkward question. ‘When I saw you on the guest list it crossed my mind that you might be interested in the work we are doing in another part of our operation.’ He thought for a moment. ‘May I suggest an alteration to the programme after lunch? In return for a slightly less leisurely lunch, I can offer a short tour of the Abraham and Sarah Project before our demonstration of the Borax-III reactor at work!’
With that he led the way to the cafeteria. Jo tagged along, trying to emulate Smokey’s ability to blend into the background.
Chapter Six - The Laboratory
Jo was surprised how hungry she was. She was careful to not draw attention to herself in case anyone realised she was not on the guest list, although so far only the guard and Lethe had appeared to register her presence and neither had shown more than a fleeting interest. Even so she kept her head down and tucked into her lunch, maintaining a low profile. This had the added advantage of reducing conversation and the risk that she might come face to face with the Lake family and Matthew. She felt instinctively that is was best to keep her distance from them.
The food was delicious. She had clam chowder as a starter. She had enjoyed the thick seafood stew during her recent visit to America with the Morning Glory Choir. She smiled as she remembered hearing someone say, ‘Please pass the frosted meatloaf,’ and realised that the frosting referred to a coating of mashed potato!
She piled on a large helping of buttered vegetables and a broccoli and mushroom casserole which tasted familiar. She was thinking about that when her neighbour said, ‘Betty Crocker never lets you down!’ and Jo smiled, remembering the kitchen back home, and its well-thumbed copy of Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, which Ali said had belonged to her mother. Who knows, thought Jo. It might have been bought on this trip to America!
By the time Jo had polished off her lime chiffon pie the hastily convened tour was ready to move along. Jo kept clear of the group that included her family and Matthew. She stayed well to the back of the queue waiting to board the bus to the laboratory.
Jo had not realised how huge the complex was, and how many separate divisions Titus presided over. As the bus travelled towards the main entrance, Jo noticed signs to different parts of the organisation - one section was titled Climate Research, another Transatlantic Communications, another Cold Fusion.
During the journey Jo took the opportunity to study Ali, who was engrossed in a book. How wonderful, she thought, to see Mum when she was my age! I would love to talk with her, but that might be too weird.
Unlike Lethe, Ali seemed calm and contented. Not for the first time, Jo observed that a powerful glamour surrounded Lethe. The twins were well-nigh identical, but somehow Lethe had a dramatic beauty whereas Ali was quietly pretty. In her heart of hearts Jo would have liked to take after her aunt, but she was fairly certain she favoured her mother. And a good thing too, she told herself sternly, if not entirely convincingly.
When they finally arrived there was a delay – the unscheduled tour caught the security guard on the hop, and there was confusion as to the location of the keys to the laboratory. Dad could easily find them, thought Jo, remembering her father’s ability to locate things that were lost. Thinking of Paul, she thought how amazing it would be if he were part of the group as well; had perhaps come with his uncle; but it was just fantasy. Paul had not met his Native American family until he was an adult. Not only that, none of the boys were as handsome as him.
As they stood waiting Jo could hear Matthew talking to Rosemary Lake.
‘Interesting family names,’ he observed quietly. ’Rosemary for remembrance; Lethe after the river of oblivion and Alithea meaning truth. Unless I am very much mistaken, dear lady, you are a Mistress of Memory and the twins have inherited your talents.’
Doctor Lake laughed. ‘In the presence of a master of the art, Professor Jamieson, I would not expect to go unrecognised.’
Matthew inclined his head in acknowledgement. A question occurred to him. ‘You have a twin?’ he asked.
Rosemary Lake shook her head regretfully. ‘I did, but she died in utero.’ Jo was shaken. Like my twin! she thought. At that moment Rosemary Lake looked directly at Jo, almost as if she had heard Jo’s thinking. Quickly Jo shielded, and Rosemary, frowning slightly, turned back to continue talking to Matthew. ‘I’m a chimera,’ she said, ‘I absorbed the DNA of my unborn twin.’ Wordlessly Matthew turned back his cuff and showed her the faint whorls on his wrist. ‘Blaschko lines,’ she said slowly. ‘Well, well. We have a lot in common, Professor Jamieson.’
‘Your daughters will need strong guidance,’ Matthew observed. ‘I have a suggestion which I hope you will consider. As well as offering an excellent, conventional education, my university has special facilities for research into harnessing and nurturing abilities such as theirs. It will be an honour, when the time comes, to help them realise their full potential.’
‘You will have one willing pupil, and one reluctant scholar,’ smiled Rosemary. ‘You might live to regret your kind offer!’
During the delay Lethe was fractious and bored, and set out to provoke Ali. Jo tuned into some spiteful, childish taunts. ‘I’m Daddy’s favourite,’ sneered Lethe. ‘You’re too boring – always got your head in a book.’
Ali pointedly turned her back and carried on reading. Swift as a rattlesnake, Lethe struck. ‘Don’t you dare ignore me,’ she hissed, and she snatched the book and threw it high into the air just as the queue started to move into the laboratory.
The book landed at Jo’s feet. She automatically bent to pick it up. A chill ran through her when she recognised an old, cloth-bound edition with gold lettering. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick – The Whale. The same book that Lethe had given to Jo’s father when they were young.
Jo remembered Lethe reminding Paul of the gift.
‘Your father and I once shared a passion, Jo, for Herman Melville’s books. Especially The Whale.’ Her voice was light, but there was darkness behind her words. ‘Do you still have that first edition I bought you, Paul?
It wasn’t hers to give! was Jo’s first indignant thought. Then she remembered how uncomfortable her father had been at Lethe’s insinuation that they shared a passion for more than reading. Jo was well aware that his discomfort came about because, however hard Paul tried to resist, part of him was still beguiled by Lethe.
Ali was desperately trying to see where the book had landed, but everyone was milling about as they took their seats, and then silence fell and her chance to find it was gone.
Jo slipped the book under her overalls, wondering how to get it back to Ali after the tour, but even as she was thinking that, another idea began to grow. Her mother and father had quarrelled about Lethe.
‘Lethe has an arrow in you yet, Paul Lakota, and you know it well.’
Paul picked up his cue, glad to hide behind words half-remembered from his college days. ‘Ali, I may think of her softly from time to time, but I will cut off my hand before I reach for her again.’
As she thought of the mayhem and misery Lethe had caused her family, Jo’s idea crystallised. Perhaps if the book disappeared, things would be different! Without a mutual interest, maybe the attraction between Lethe and Paul would just fizzle out.
In a split second, the decision was made. Jo would not be giving the book back to Ali.
She tried to concentrate on what Titus was saying but something was concerning her. She had a very powerful sense that Sebastian was close by, but he was nowhere to be seen. Jo wished he would show himself. She wanted to go back to her parents and without him she did not know how.
Meanwhile Titus was in full flow. ‘I am s
ure you all know the Biblical story of Abraham, known as the father of many nations, and his wife Sarah. Abraham and Sarah were very old when a visitor told them they would conceive a son. Sarah laughed, incredulous, and the visitor reminded her that nothing is too difficult for God. Later she laughed again, this time for joy, declaring, ‘God hath made me to laugh. Everyone that heareth will laugh with me.’ And here at The Abraham and Sarah Project we want childless couples to laugh with joy when, against all the odds, they too conceive a child.’
Titus warmed to his subject. ‘In the 1600s, women who were childless were treated with suspicion. They needed to prove their piety. For centuries, infertility was seen as the woman’s problem. Most men were assumed to be fertile. Even as recently as the 1800s, barren women were still being accused of unbalanced living. Apparently irregularity, excessive or luxurious living upsets the bodily constitution. Of women, that is. We men, of course, are made of sterner stuff and can easily accommodate luxury, excess and irregularity. Well, that’s my excuse.’
Most of the men in the audience laughed heartily at Titus’s joke. Jo noticed, however, that several of the women looked rather tight-lipped.
‘On a serious note,’ Titus continued, ‘new discoveries and surgical instruments shifted attention to anatomical causes of infertility such as defects in the uterus and cervix. And in 1850 Marion Sims developed the Sims speculum, and with it, was able to widen the aperture of the cervix. He believed that blockages prevented fertilisation. He shocked his colleagues by experimenting with artificial insemination. Despite these advances, there was still a wide-spread belief among doctors that a woman's personal misbehaviour caused most cases of infertility.’
Titus paused and chuckled. ‘All you young ladies troubling your pretty little heads with thoughts of women’s rights, beware! In 1873 Harvard’s Edward Clark warned that heavy mental activity in the teenage years could wreck a girl’s reproductive system. He said. The results are monstrous brains and puny bodies ... If the reproductive machinery is not manufactured then, it will not be later... The brain cannot take more than its share without injury to other organs. Don’t say you weren’t warned!’
Jo found herself wondering exactly when second-wave feminism had begun in America. Judging by the expressions on the faces of some of the women in the audience, it wouldn’t be long in coming.
‘Then, to balance the scales, in the late 1800s a New York physician, Emil Noeggerath, argued that sterility is caused by gonorrhoea and men with the disease infect their wives.’
Some of the men in the audience looked distinctly uneasy at this turn of events, as did a couple of the women. Some wives stared straight ahead, carefully making their faces blank.
‘As an interesting aside, family size was shrinking dramatically with increased knowledge of contraception and in 1910 President Theodore Roosevelt and other eugenicists warned that ‘wilful sterility’ on the part of white, middle class Americans was unpatriotic, leading to ‘race suicide.’ However, our concern here is with those unable to conceive, not those choosing to limit the number of children they have. In 1921 a test for blocked fallopian tubes, a major cause of female infertility, was developed. And in 1934 twin daughters were born from donor insemination.Research is moving quickly now – just over ten years ago John Rock reported the first fertilisation of human eggs in a laboratory and now public demand for fertility treatment far outpaces our capacity. The Abraham and Sarah project builds on Rock’s work. We confidently expect our first test-tube baby any day now!’
Jo smiled to herself – she could have told him it would be another twenty years or more before the first test-tube baby would be born. She remembered watching the story on the television news back home.
The thought of home almost made Jo gasp out loud; the longing was so acute. Jo knew that strong emotions made it possible for others to read her thoughts, despite her shielding. She did not want to draw any attention to herself, so made a huge effort to calm her mind and concentrate on what Titus was saying.
Titus invited the group to visit the laboratory he called The Nursery. As they filed in, tightly packed around a workbench, Jo noticed that Lethe’s customary air of boredom had been replaced with genuine interest. She engaged Titus in animated conversation, asking intelligent questions. Clearly the subject fascinated her.
Titus was enchanted and teased Lethe. ’Aren’t you afraid of developing a monstrous brain and a puny body with all this thinking, little lady?’
Lethe laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s at all likely to happen,’ she purred. ‘Do you?’ Jo realised with a shock that Lethe was flirting with Titus. But he’s ancient! she thought, appalled. And she’s my age!
Still chuckling, and obviously flattered, Titus pointed out the test-tubes and Petri dishes used to contain the egg and sperm. ‘The term In Vitro Fertilisation or IVF, comes from the use of glass containers - in vitro being the Latin term for in glass. The embryos we create are incubated for eighteen hours and fertilisation will have occurred when there are pronuclei and six to eight cells.’
‘Then what happens?’ demanded Lethe.
‘We are looking at ways to put the fertilised egg back into the mother so the embryo can continue to develop naturally.’
‘How many babies have been born that way?’
Titus looked downcast. ‘So far, we have had no successes. But it will happen. Of that I am confident.’
Lethe pointed at one of the test-tubes. ‘I predict that this one will succeed.’ She pretended to be tuning into a higher power. ‘It will be a boy. And his name will be…’ She racked her brains for something unusual… ‘Sebastian!’
Jo nearly jumped out of her skin, then did a swift calculation. Was it possible? Even as she realised that it was entirely possible, however improbable, Lethe reached towards the test-tube, and proclaimed, ‘I baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost…’
Don’t let her touch it! Please! The words flashed into Jo’s mind in a voice Jo recognised. Sebastian himself was nowhere to be seen but his desperate message was as clear as a bell. The urgent plea made Jo want to help, but she could see at a glance that there was no way she could get to Lethe through the crush of people.
Titus looked uncomfortable. ‘That’s enough, little lady,’ he warned, but Lethe was busy making the sign of the cross and chose to ignore him. Her mocking of religion angered Titus. ‘I said, that’s enough!’ he growled and he seized her by the wrist. Her eyes flashed with fury, and she pushed him away. As she did, she knocked the stand holding the test-tube, and it began to tumble.
For a moment everyone froze. The fall seemed to happen in slow motion, then there was a scramble and Zachary Lake deftly caught the test-tube and returned it safely to the stand. There was a round of applause during which he said, modestly, ‘Shaken, not stirred.’ Baffled glances all around led him to add, ‘From Ian Fleming’s latest – Diamonds Are Forever. Very exciting.’
No! The cry ripped through Jo’s soul. She felt Sebastian’s anguish. Revelation after revelation tumbled through her mind and she grasped that his dream journey had been a quest to change his beginning. Because in the future his body was trapped in a coma, he could not physically intervene in the past, so he’d brought Jo along to act as his hands, to ensure no damage occurred to his embryo. He wanted to create a different life for himself. Jo saw clearly how he hated his appearance and his life as Lethe’s henchman, blaming both on the mishap with the test-tube. She felt wretched.
I’m so sorry. She had no idea if Sebastian received her emp. One minute her mind was filled with his distress, then her thoughts were her own again. He was gone.
Zachary Lake fixed his wayward daughter with a glare. ‘You had better apologise, Lethe.’
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, adding anxiously, ‘Will Sebastian be alright?’
With a struggle Titus returned to his avuncular self. ‘No harm done, missy. If – and it is a big if – there ever is a Sebastian, I am sure he will be as rig
ht as rain! Now, we need to make our way back for the final part of our tour.’
He led the group to the bus stop. Jo held back. She wanted to be on her own and work out how to return home. Without Sebastian she might be trapped here forever! How was she going to get back?
There was a grove of elm trees to the side of the building, and Jo quietly slipped away to the shelter of the ancient trees. No-one seemed to notice her departure. There was something vaguely familiar about the grove. Jo felt as though she had been there before. Or rather, she thought, perhaps she would be there one day in the future.
When safely out of sight she set about disposing of Moby Dick. She had decided to bury the book that linked Lethe and her father and started scrabbling at the earth. She knew it was a first edition, and as it wasn’t in her nature to vandalise books, particularly valuable ones, she looked for something to protect it. There was nothing to hand, so in the end she took off her radiation suit, not needed since she was skipping the tour of the reactor, and wrapped the book in that. She buried it among the roots of the tallest tree. She imagined someone coming across it again years into the future.
Once that was done, she leaned back against a tree and racked her brains. Maybe she would be able to travel in her dreams, like Sebastian did? She’d heard of astral projection, or soul flight, but hadn’t the faintest idea how to set about that.
She curled up into a ball and tried to sleep, concentrating on visualising her room in the hospital. Eventually she did doze off for a few moments, but dreaming eluded her and when she woke, nothing had changed.
‘There has to be a way back,’ she said out loud. ‘I can’t stay here forever.’
If only you had some ruby slippers, Jo. You could click your heels together three times and say, 'There's no place like home,' and you'll be there!"